With windows you can adjust voltage right in the driver window if your card can support it, supposedly you can adjust voltage in linux, but I haven't found it yet.

Under win 8.1 with latest crimson drivers I could clock the 390x to 1200 gpu, and 1600 ram, with power adjustment set at about 15%. It was getting about 33 Mh/s. I had it in my mobo, and GPU fan and system fans(3x120mm) at 100%. It was running about 78C.

Under ubuntu 14.04 LTS I was only able to turn up the ram speed to 1600 Mhz, the gpu speeds were bouncing all around from 900 to 1060 (stock). It was still doing 30 Mh/s.

It seems more stable under windows while overclocked.

Not overclocked its the same with either system, about 27Mhs. With linux you can make a headless system, so it gets disturbed less and hashes more over time, than if you're mining with your desktop. You could do the same with windows I suppose.

EthOS is the easiest solution. Some people complain that you have to pay ~$40-$50 for it but if you are worried about making that little back then probably shouldn't get started into coin mining. Just my thoughts/opinion.

I've tried quite a few, from Pimp, EthOS, straight up Ubuntu, SimpleminingOS, and Win 7,8.1,10. By far the easiest to setup an run, especially if your running more than 4 or 5 cards is SimplemingOS. You can still overclock, undervolt to an extent, and has a ton of miners built in for ZEC, XMR, ETH, Sia, etc... Write it to a 16Gb flash drive, change the email to yours, pop it in and done. Goto the website frontend and setup whatever you want to mine. It's free for now but goes to $2 or $3 per month per rig sometime in the future. Pimp, EthOS, and Linux (Ubuntu) were by far the most complicated, especially if you wanted to run the latest GPU's or dual mine. Windows can be a bit buggy (ie; this latest WIN 10 forced update crap) but to me it has the most flexibility for a novice, plus more software support, plus I can triple mine on my rigs under Windows. Unless your fluent in Linux you'll get better hash rates on a Windows machine. Just my experience,

@praesto Btw, the title of this thread wasn't whats the best OS for free, the op was just asking opinions on a OS choice... All of them cost $$ except for maybe Ubuntu. I tried EthOS v1 when it first came out, fought with it for almost a month to get the same hash as I was getting on a Win 7 machine. Finally gave up on it and called that $39.00 a learning lesson. I tried it again in the last month or so, upgraded to the latest version at the time, still a PITA to configure. If you think that's the easiest, then try SimplemingOS, that'll blow your mind and it's free for now..

I've tried quite a few, from Pimp, EthOS, straight up Ubuntu, SimpleminingOS, and Win 7,8.1,10. By far the easiest to setup an run, especially if your running more than 4 or 5 cards is SimplemingOS. You can still overclock, undervolt to an extent, and has a ton of miners built in for ZEC, XMR, ETH, Sia, etc... Write it to a 16Gb flash drive, change the email to yours, pop it in and done. Goto the website frontend and setup whatever you want to mine. It's free for now but goes to $2 or $3 per month per rig sometime in the future. Pimp, EthOS, and Linux (Ubuntu) were by far the most complicated, especially if you wanted to run the latest GPU's or dual mine. Windows can be a bit buggy (ie; this latest WIN 10 forced update crap) but to me it has the most flexibility for a novice, plus more software support, plus I can triple mine on my rigs under Windows. Unless your fluent in Linux you'll get better hash rates on a Windows machine. Just my experience,

@praesto Btw, the title of this thread wasn't whats the best OS for free, the op was just asking opinions on a OS choice... All of them cost $$ except for maybe Ubuntu. I tried EthOS v1 when it first came out, fought with it for almost a month to get the same hash as I was getting on a Win 7 machine. Finally gave up on it and called that $39.00 a learning lesson. I tried it again in the last month or so, upgraded to the latest version at the time, still a PITA to configure. If you think that's the easiest, then try SimplemingOS, that'll blow your mind and it's free for now..

Just my 2 cents....

All sounds good, regarding the title - providing information that the OP may have not originally have known could help facilitate his decision. If all questions on the forums were answered by one or two posts then it would be a pretty lame place.

Edit: I checked the SimpleMiningOS and it looks pretty neat. The downside is the cost is perpetual so it is significantly more expensive than almost every other option. Assuming someone plans to run this for more than a year it quickly beats out the cost of EthOS

I've tried quite a few, from Pimp, EthOS, straight up Ubuntu, SimpleminingOS, and Win 7,8.1,10. By far the easiest to setup an run, especially if your running more than 4 or 5 cards is SimplemingOS. You can still overclock, undervolt to an extent, and has a ton of miners built in for ZEC, XMR, ETH, Sia, etc... Write it to a 16Gb flash drive, change the email to yours, pop it in and done. Goto the website frontend and setup whatever you want to mine. It's free for now but goes to $2 or $3 per month per rig sometime in the future. Pimp, EthOS, and Linux (Ubuntu) were by far the most complicated, especially if you wanted to run the latest GPU's or dual mine. Windows can be a bit buggy (ie; this latest WIN 10 forced update crap) but to me it has the most flexibility for a novice, plus more software support, plus I can triple mine on my rigs under Windows. Unless your fluent in Linux you'll get better hash rates on a Windows machine. Just my experience,

@praesto Btw, the title of this thread wasn't whats the best OS for free, the op was just asking opinions on a OS choice... All of them cost $$ except for maybe Ubuntu. I tried EthOS v1 when it first came out, fought with it for almost a month to get the same hash as I was getting on a Win 7 machine. Finally gave up on it and called that $39.00 a learning lesson. I tried it again in the last month or so, upgraded to the latest version at the time, still a PITA to configure. If you think that's the easiest, then try SimplemingOS, that'll blow your mind and it's free for now..

Just my 2 cents....

All sounds good, regarding the title - providing information that the OP may have not originally have known could help facilitate his decision. If all questions on the forums were answered by one or two posts then it would be a pretty lame place.

Edit: I checked the SimpleMiningOS and it looks pretty neat. The downside is the cost is perpetual so it is significantly more expensive than almost every other option. Assuming someone plans to run this for more than a year it quickly beats out the cost of EthOS

I agree with you on the perpetual cost of SimpleminingOS, not a fan. But for a novice looking for a easy to configure OS, it's the ticket. I'm running it on a 6 card frankenrig now, with a mix of RX 470/480 and 580 cards. It doesn't care, took 10 minutes to setup (9 to flash the thumbdrive), no driver issues, just hashes away.. But just factoring in $2 bucks a month for a rig that's hopefully making you over $800 a month after electricity according to whattomine.com dual mining Eth and Sia, 2 or 3 bucks a month is pretty easy to absorb as a cost of mining, and lessen the headaches, and you can even pay it with Eth or Bitcoin. Don't even need have a credit card or bank account.

But good to be informed about most of the available choices though..

As for your statement about if "If all questions on the forums were answered by one or two posts then it would be a pretty lame place.", i'll have to disagree. I log in here for information and maybe try and help someone out, not entertainment. Search a problem, get a good answer, not lame at all, it would be quick and informative. This mining forum is already overrun with the same questions a hundred times over.

That is what builds the community for the forum, we will agree to disagree there. Sadly the 470/480s and 580 cards at the current hashrate and Eth/USD will only yield around $600 now (price of Eth nose dived last night)

That is what builds the community for the forum, we will agree to disagree there. Sadly the 470/480s and 580 cards at the current hashrate and Eth/USD will only yield around $600 now (price of Eth nose dived last night)

But it's still 2-3 bucks.... Comon seriously. Jumping over a dollar to get a dime. It also depends on whether your a bag holder or just straight up monthly profit. I remember say "damn it's only 6 bucks a coin", now look at it... Everyone i'm sure wishes they would have bought more back when it was $6...

That is what builds the community for the forum, we will agree to disagree there. Sadly the 470/480s and 580 cards at the current hashrate and Eth/USD will only yield around $600 now (price of Eth nose dived last night)

But it's still 2-3 bucks.... Comon seriously. Jumping over a dollar to get a dime. It also depends on whether your a bag holder or just straight up monthly profit. I remember say "damn it's only 6 bucks a coin", now look at it... Everyone i'm sure wishes they would have bought more back when it was $6...

Anyway I think the op has some good info to base a decision off of..

Good luck all and happy mining.

Anyone getting into mining for the long run should minimize cost and maximize knowledge. EthOS beats out SimpleOS from that perspective. Free mining platforms beat out both.

That is what builds the community for the forum, we will agree to disagree there. Sadly the 470/480s and 580 cards at the current hashrate and Eth/USD will only yield around $600 now (price of Eth nose dived last night)

But it's still 2-3 bucks.... Comon seriously. Jumping over a dollar to get a dime. It also depends on whether your a bag holder or just straight up monthly profit. I remember say "damn it's only 6 bucks a coin", now look at it... Everyone i'm sure wishes they would have bought more back when it was $6...

Anyway I think the op has some good info to base a decision off of..

Good luck all and happy mining.

Anyone getting into mining for the long run should minimize cost and maximize knowledge. EthOS beats out SimpleOS from that perspective. Free mining platforms beat out both.

I've tried quite a few, from Pimp, EthOS, straight up Ubuntu, SimpleminingOS, and Win 7,8.1,10. By far the easiest to setup an run, especially if your running more than 4 or 5 cards is SimplemingOS. You can still overclock, undervolt to an extent, and has a ton of miners built in for ZEC, XMR, ETH, Sia, etc... Write it to a 16Gb flash drive, change the email to yours, pop it in and done. Goto the website frontend and setup whatever you want to mine. It's free for now but goes to $2 or $3 per month per rig sometime in the future. Pimp, EthOS, and Linux (Ubuntu) were by far the most complicated, especially if you wanted to run the latest GPU's or dual mine. Windows can be a bit buggy (ie; this latest WIN 10 forced update crap) but to me it has the most flexibility for a novice, plus more software support, plus I can triple mine on my rigs under Windows. Unless your fluent in Linux you'll get better hash rates on a Windows machine. Just my experience,

@praesto Btw, the title of this thread wasn't whats the best OS for free, the op was just asking opinions on a OS choice... All of them cost $$ except for maybe Ubuntu. I tried EthOS v1 when it first came out, fought with it for almost a month to get the same hash as I was getting on a Win 7 machine. Finally gave up on it and called that $39.00 a learning lesson. I tried it again in the last month or so, upgraded to the latest version at the time, still a PITA to configure. If you think that's the easiest, then try SimplemingOS, that'll blow your mind and it's free for now..

Just my 2 cents....

great info! but i was just thinking about that as of this date it isnt free anymore. however the reason why i wrote to you is to ask why you havent tried claymore mining app?

It also depends on how many GPU you want to use. As a user I prefer Windows but for my rig I chose Ubuntu to have more GPU without the driver limit you have in Windows. If you're not familiar with Ubuntu (it's my case), the setup is more complicated but still it is achievable.

Windows if you wish to use Nvidia cards. I have both Win 10 and Xubuntu rigs setup. The Nvidia cards can mine at max ETH possible rates but at 60-65% power limit. I am unaware of that being possible in linux. If you want best free OS then just get a linux based distro. I use Xubuntu and am currently having an 8 gpu setup on it.

I am a long standing Ubuntu user, but usually I don't mess with 3D stuff in Ubuntu because it's a real pain to get all the drivers sorted. For testing purposes, I downgraded to Ubuntu 16 so that I could try to install AMD's drivers for mining. I never even got to the GUI with those drivers because of some versioning issue. I did get 3D acceleration with the open source drivers, but it wouldn't mine for more than 15 seconds. So that was a bust. THEN I learned that SimpleMiningOS is based off of Ubuntu 16, and I booted that up. It was really easy and auto-updated. I parsed about 20 MH/s with my card. Anybody could use that, even someone who doesn't know Linux at all. However, under Windows I was parsing 22 MH/s. After a lot more tinkering in Windows I got things up to 28.5 MH/s top speed. I haven't tried EthOS. For me, I'd say Windows wins because I couldn't do anything to match those same speeds with Linux based systems. I also didn't want to pay money for something that I didn't already own which may or may not work.

Buy windows 10 on ebay for 11.50 haha. The other problem you have with anything like simple mining is they get you hooked and then once your used to the product or locked in via an update they will start charging, and unless you have all the time to reconstruct your work you will be in a pickle with no options !!!!!!, i am a newbie but win 10 for a few dollars sounds like a good getting started option for me